Legacy
by Handful of Silence
Summary: Magic!AU. John Watson is an ancient Warlock in the 21st Century. It was only a matter of time before Sherlock found out, whether he wanted him to or not. John/Sherlock
1. Chapter 1

_AN/ Magic!John fic (This was so much fun to write) that came about as a result of thinking about crossing over Sherlock with BBC Merlin or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and getting something completely different when I actually put pen to paper. Long fic is long, hence the splitting it into two._

_Vague hints left over from the original fic idea to Neverwhere and other Gaiman stories (and tiny ones to Arthurian lore – Merlin/Sherlock x-over just wouldn't be banished) to those who want to spot them. I will at some point exorcise this persistent crossover demon by writing something that actually works =]_

_Pairing: John/Sherlock_

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><p><em>There was a boy,<br>__A very strange enchanted boy,  
><em>_They say he wandered very far, very far,  
><em>_over land and sea.  
><em>_And then one day, one magic day, he passed my way.  
><em>_**Nature Boy, David Bowie**_

* * *

><p><strong>Legacy<br>****1/3**

John Watson is a creature of magic.

Old old magic, ancient earth magic. Not the sort comprised of cheap coin tricks or pulling the right card out of the pack for an audience to nod and clap at, delighted, approving, curious and watching out for the tell, but really, deep down, not wanting to know, – wanting to be fooled for a moment. That is a mechanical magic, based on trickery, deception, making the audience look where you don't want them to while you form some fancy illusion.

This – the real magic – is the natural, wrought into every fibre of a life magic, fundamental, integral, the sort of practice that goes by different names in altering places – the occult, arcane, esoteric, wicca – that while the etymology and understanding of it changes, the connotations always stay the same. It doesn't matter in what context; it is always something to be feared, unproven, dangerous. The assumption is immediately made that most in search of the knowledge would use it for their own selfish gain. Humans have an evolutionary trigger built into them that makes them automatically fear what they don't understand.

In older times, many many moons ago, magic was rawer, more visible, the stuff of ignorant fears, enough to rile mobs to show their displeasure, and so the concept, intricacies and arcanum associated with it went underground, resurfacing only in carnival and circus tricks, watered-down, basic. It reduced itself so far that most people forgot what they had shared their pasts with; and with modernisation and industrialisation, old myths, stories and legends suited to time and place were forgotten as people dispersed, spread out, emigrated to America or Australia and didn't bring their tales with them. These days, the idea of magic is treated with more of a sceptical mocking indifference, which suits its practitioners just fine_. _

Nobody believes in it anymore – because nobody wants to, as in an age where science and rationalisation can explain nearly everything, allowing that belief is admitting that there are some things that you can't explain, like the way some shadows are darker, more real that others, how they seem to move, how sometimes in the mirror there is a glimpse of something else that isn't your reflection, and often it is better to live in ignorance than to be aware of what is hiding in plain sight. Nobody except those left over from the golden ages; abandoned to survive in the travelling shows or performing their craft privately and integrating with normal society.

One such relic is the man who goes by the name of Dr John Watson.

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><p>In this form – the body of John Watson, five foot seven, sandy blonde hair, military cropped short, who has a sister called Harry, who is a solider, a trained army doctor – he has lived thirty-four years, young by comparison to the countless ages he has seen. In reality, John, or the other names he has gone by, has been around longer, much longer; transcends years, decades, centuries; lasting because of his magic – that survives mortal death long after his body has passed on – which retains the essence of who he is, has always been. It's like a reincarnation of sorts, like a cycle, a wheel, a circle, and every death is followed by a rebirth with a new name and an old soul in a shiny form with all the lingering internal faults.<p>

And then he starts again, not being aware of the wealth of priori knowledge buried deep within his subconscious, dormant until he himself discovers his talent. It's usually about the age of eleven, give or take a couple of times when he was a late bloomer, and around that time, when other children start worrying about going to secondary school, making new friends, the start of puberty, John suddenly finds out – how has alternated through the years – that he's not like normal children. It's a harsh thing to go through so young, but there is little he can do on the matter, and when the magic manifests itself (he's had spontaneous teleportation a fair few times, and there was that one lifetime – was it around the 1600's? – when he woke up levitating), the flood breaks through the weak walls of his inner subconscious, torpid until now. And John Watson is confronted with the man he was/has been/is; remembering, reliving portions of previous lives in snatches through the medium of dream space, where the lines of Time are more blurred than in the real world. It is harder to be a normal kid after that, but he's had lifetimes of practice at it.

He/his magic (inseparable, matter and form, with the Aristotelian idea of there being an organising principle, his soul; formed from a patchwork of recollections and born into a different body every lifetime) remembers before London was a capital. It is surprising, odd but comforting, that whenever John starts pining for different pastures than the ones he was born into, possessed by an itching wanderlust and a desire for _home,_ knowing that where he is is not where he wants to be,he always returns eventually, back to England, to London. The location has become a constant after so many reruns. To John, London is/always has been home for him.

He was there, in another form, another life, when London was Londinium; remembers when the first fire felled it when stormed by a vengeful queen, remembers the second Great fire catching thatch roof, jumping and leaping from house to house, embers and sparks aided by wind, teasing the flames brighter. Remembers treason plots, and plagues and timeless plays performed on their opening night, and then remembers further back, spreading out of London, further back than invaders and conquerors to the days of Gods and the Old Religion, times of legend, myth, lore, when there was a fertile land called Albion and even that name was new, a land that grew under his watchful eye and subtle guidance, a land that fell in war and strife – a well worn tune that gains a repeat performance every new rebirth – and still there is John left standing at the end of it all.

(_John who has been many men, but is always the same, the restless wanderer found in many tales recorded on raggedy parchment. John who knows of the stories told about him in the flickering warmth of firelight, long after the life he's lived has become a myth; parents indulging wide-eyed children, capturing their imagination with embellished tales of old names that John brushed off long ago; Emyrs, Nestor; he's lost the identities and they've instead become archetypes, with all the intricacies of his life disregarded_)

There are names in history he has been, but for now John Watson is not yet a name History will deign to remember – History, who is a fickle, changeable thing, one for fancy additions and bias, who knows a familiar soul but who lets him get on with his life, despite him inevitably ending up chasing some sort of danger. One day this will change, but this lifetime, John Watson as a name will not be one that stands alone. History keeps to herself and informs no-one of the other times, the parallel lives where they already exist; the doctor, the detective and a Baker Street address, what in this universe has taken longer to happen than any of the other times.

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><p>John returns this century, before he is shipped off to Afghanistan, to London. It's a city that's been built on the foundation of magic; John's home, territory he has long protected, defended against threats no-one knows are there – not made of his sort of elemental magic, but a specialised magic; thriving beating City magic. And through the cobbled alleys and tube stations and the thrum and the restless rhythm of people, that move in swarms and cycles, London does not forget its roots.<p>

Magic might be a forgotten lore passed off as laughable delusions or the stuff of fairy tales by most, but it is still _there, _under the skin, in the stones and streets and the brickwork of London. It makes itself known in the small exclusive covens that gather at full moon or blood moon or on the first day of solstice, it is in the scribbled pentangles that leave presence markers of a ritual on the wooden floor of a crumbling building even if the chalk has been rubbed off and scrubbed away, it is in the symbols on disused walls, spray-painted in vibrant vivid swirls, graffiti for pedestrians to tut and shake their heads at, but words of power, signals written in rune for those who known how to read them.

And London Magic invites in creatures on the peripheries, mixing the infinite diversity of the mundane normal and fascinating unique in one sprawling glass and metal city. John once visited an antique bookshop near Charing Cross and and ended up drinking tea with an amiable Principality who influenced his appreciation for tea, and they spent a good hour discussing the pros and cons of using a flaming sword (the Principality had mentioned longingly having owned one once), has been more than once on a monopoly pub crawl starting from Elephant and Castle, only ever getting as far as Trafalgar Square, with a demon wearing a suave pair of sunglasses.

In London, such creatures, and John among them, all gather because a place of so much potential magic and realised magic, however obscure and diverse, is a place of power. Safety, familiarity with kith and kin. Where artefacts and amulets that would have been coveted a thousand years ago linger dusty on stalls in Portobello Road, where there is a reading room in the British Library for which there is no key in which spell books and almanac's are recorded and kept in check by an ancient wrinkled man from Monmouth who, given the chance, will tell stories that no-one knows are true or not of times long past. There are many who gather, and they tend to adapt, assimilate, and become part of the hive of London. Separate individuals of their own personal powers that make up pieces of a large network that exists as a mass mind. London Magic thinks and feels, is almost sentient in a way that science could not understand, and protects every one of its wandering forgotten children.

John can recognise one of his own kind – like a group of strangers that have something in common – and they're all aware of each other being there, existing side by side, sensing the signatures of other types of magic, an alternate taste in the air dependant on the district of the city. John is a rare creature that not only can taste, but _see _the influence to the environment, reads red Goblin magic, that tastes of money and greed, around Canary Wharf, notes glittering trials and markers of blue around Chelsea and the West End where the Sidhe gather in swarms. They all know of each other, and if they come into contact, all but the most private of them acknowledge each other respectfully, even if mostly they keep their distance. Over the years, John has gotten to know the regulars, those who are timeless, mostly disregarded but still there. The once called Spring-heeled Jack sells newspapers on the corner of Piccadilly, giggling sprites run a joke shop in Hammersmith, and Robin Goodfellow performs regular dates on the Comedy Circuit.

The city – John's city – is filled with things seen and unseen, and he has lived in London long enough to search out the concealed things; the man named Old Bailey dressed in feathers who inhabits the rooftops of the skyline, the royal Regent that takes the guise of a sleeping homeless man seated on the bandstand at Regent's Park. John knows why there are always six ravens in the Tower of London, knows where to find a good apothecary for poultices and herbs should he ever need them, knows that the reason that the London Transport Network is always doing work on the Circle Line is because there's something down there late at night on trains that run empty, _Oranges and Lemon's_ sung quietly by ghostly voices to those who are listening.

And John himself helps protect this place, his home, from rogue agents, balances the status quo and deals with elements that would expose them on the request of other less powerful creatures who come to him, and ask his help – they know his long-abandoned names, know his legends and fear and respect him in equal measure – and to aid him John has his own network of lookers and watchers in the rats and the pigeons; who see all, know all, and say nothing but to the chosen few. And by these methods, he looks out for a city he considers his after so long, the city magic as much a presence within him as his own. London is brimming with memories, hopes, destiny's and tragedies, spiritual fate lines and electrical power lines; and it sights the footsteps of weary travellers who have wandered for so long and takes them in, shelters them, like it's doing – has always done – with the tired soul of John Watson. John – medic, doctor, physician, healer, the words change with the eras – who went away again to war, he who has been to the sands of Afghanistan before and finds it sad that some things do not change.

City Magic, London Magic has comforted him so long it is like the loss of something when he feels the arid heat again of the Middle East again – Afghanistan – , in a land of roiling sands that hides magic of its own. Still, healing is the calling he has felt since the first lifetime, and he is bolstered by the company of his own, Ifrit and Djinn that he works alongside as he fixes mortal damage to soldiers and friends with his own learned skills from medical school, and when that fails, with the subtle additions of his own personal wisdoms, the right whispered words to knit skin together, some simpler charms that require no words at all.

But as much as he longs for home in an aching sickness, he is also missing something else. An ache rawer, more insistent. His magic touches his mind, tries to read what is shown there, wonders what the impatience he feels, has always felt, is for ( _the constant waiting, waiting since the beginning, the start, the infinite regression of something that has always existed in some form)_. It is always in dream this is confronted, his thoughts and sleep patterns restless, disturbed; and he taps his fingers, eyes flicking to a doorway, gateway, arch, the imagery always the same, and he is expectant, waiting for someone to turn up, at a cable, in a café, or bar, and the figure never does. And he is always disappointed.

John Watson is _waiting/needing/dreaming _about something – someone – that does not yet exist, maybe does not this time round, not this century, just like they haven't been there the last hundred centuries, and so John will have to wait longer, another life, another cycle, _waitinganticipatingneeding. _Wait another turn before trying again to find something to fill a phantom void that even London Magic cannot, a loneliness strengthened in Afghanistan by his disconnection with the city that so distracted him from what he was missing.

His magic touches his dreams as it always has, tentative, asks what he's waiting for, like it expects an answer this time round, but John doesn't know. Something, someone, the other half of a whole that John is lacking; companionship, not just sex; after a few lifetimes, having fleeting associations with pretty lays, both male and female, gets old very fast. John wants someone to want him, someone he can fight for, live for, someone he would die for, someone to love him. And every lifetime, that seems to be too much to ask for.

A thousand lifetimes is a long time to be alone.

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><p>The twenty-first century, Afghanistan and John is hurt, not by a sorcerer's curse or anything tinted with magic, but by a real, human hurt; a bullet fired from a gun, propelled by mechanics and the trigger finger of a solider John has never met but who hates him enough to want him to die. John is already weak from expending his magic on saving a younger man who was bleeding out in his arms, who dies anyway in the gunfire; who had so much more life to live, who was just twenty-four, who had a family who loved him, a fiancée he'd promised to marry. And then there is sound in the heat of battle, a roaring, screaming, and men are shouting, men are dying, and there is blood and sand in his eyes, and John doesn't even think as he pushes Bill Murray down and out of the way (the man who ends up saving him from bleeding out onto the sand) , and a bullet takes him instead, slices through the skin and muscle, shatters the bone of his shoulder.<p>

Modern medicine is good, but it's not good enough to heal all things, and John can't even heal himself properly – small injuries and cuts maybe, but magic doesn't work that well on the owner – and so he's invalided back again to London. Home. Some small comfort.

The city takes him back in open arms, sees it's child has been damaged, hurt – a knot of scars over his shoulder and a psychosomatic limp – and can do nothing but envelop him in the rushing normality of life. By morning it is Metro newspapers, Oyster cards, throwaway beverages, the tide of the Underground, tourists and locals all with destinations to get to, the obnoxious colourful corporation advertisements of Times Square, the constant heady to-and-fro of red buses trailing well known routes.

And then at night London and its magic converses with John's own, reads his visions, dreams, the endless _waiting, _the heady sensations stronger this lifetime than ever before,and understands that John needs something more than it can provide.

And so, in the subtle manner that only City Magic can provide, London engineers a meeting. Of two great men, of great mind and great heart, a meeting that will be documented in years to come. It knows what John needs, if he doesn't yet, and knows with a wisdom that comes from watching its inhabitants so long and reading the predicted patterns of human life, exactly _who _ he needs.

John Watson needs the world's only consulting detective.

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><p>Sherlock Holmes is a man that belongs to London. He is arrogant, aware of his own intelligence, uses it, can manipulate it if needs be. He waits for no-one, his thoughts and deductions sprinting into oncoming traffic, with no thought for anything but the chase; the churning thrill, the rhythms he forges as his feet pound the pavement, a slamming discordant melody. Sherlock does not allow for boredom, hates the idea for any moment to slip by wasted when there are experiments to be held, cases to be solved.<p>

He is like the personification of the city he has lived in all his adult life; unrepentant, with no give and all take but with a charming finesse and always, always a purpose; to help those who need it, who come to him with their problems and troubles and ask him to solve them, and whether through boredom or any other human emotion even bordering towards a glimpse of compassion, Sherlock takes the challenge. He protects London in doing to, reads its rules and respects the environment. Sherlock serves the city; and in return the London Magic looks after its own, would shroud him with thickening fog to conceal him from those who would send him harm, redirects traffic and tempts the lights green when a game – _the _game, the constant chase, the adrenaline high of it, the stakes upped every time and Sherlock throwing his whole hand of cards onto the table – is afoot.

Sherlock has his own brand of magic that he uses to aid him, not mystical or old, certainly not possessed of any degree of supernatural inclination, but rather the magic of science, _the science of deduction _he calls it; mixing chemicals with Petri-dishes and pipettes in the same manner a magician would brew potions, making great leaps of logic from very little information that in times past would have had him accused of witchcraft or sorcery. And on his violin, should he find the disposition to have a change from the scratching abusive notes he usually drags from its frame, he can compose or recall the most beautiful and ethereal pieces, classical, favouring Bach, Vivaldi and Schubert, slipping rarely into more alternative fast-paced musical styles.

Sherlock is not magical, has no innate knowledge of the craft or its assorted teachings, but he is unusually susceptible to it and to the influence of London; knows the streets and alleys as good as any cab driver, has a network of spies and look-outs in the beggars and homeless; the everywhere eyes, some that know London, some that _see _London in the ways normals don't.

London touches the cold clinical dreams of Sherlock, the one place where his emotional restraints and restrictions have no bearing on his psyche, and reads with tender fingers what is written there. It knows who he needs too.

Sherlock Holmes needs John Watson. Warlock, doctor, protector, guide, but most of all, friend. Partner.

So Montague Street springs leaks in the water mains suddenly and without cause, damp sets in over the walls, thankfully staining what Sherlock has always been hideous floral patterned wallpaper, and the whole environment becomes disagreeably cold, and detrimental to his work, forcing the world's only consulting detective to attempt to procure new lodgings. He quickly becomes aware of a possible replacement; Marylebone district, close to one of the city's oldest underground stations, intersecting the thoroughfare of Marylebone road which hosts both Madame Tussauds and the Royal Academy of Music. 221B will become home for Sherlock as it will for John, part of _their _city; their house, their citadel.

And it just so happens that Mike Stamford takes a route down a park he rarely goes, sits and eats lunch on a bench upon a whim and ends up meeting up with John. They talk about the old days, at Barts, about age and how things change, and London, they talk much of London. _You couldn't bear to be anywhere else, _Mike smiles when John professes doubts that on his army pension he can afford the high prices of rent in the city. _That's not the John Watson I know. _It rankles a slight nerve that Mike imagines him as the same John he was in his youth, the both of them at St Bartholomew's thinner, less damaged, because he's not – because war changed him like it does to all those involved in it, and the obviousness of the adaptation bothers John. He thinks after so long he should be used to it, the pain and the blood and the screaming, remembers of this war and every one prior that he's been involved in, voluntary or not, and those memories returns to him in an aching clarity in his nightmares. But it is through Mike that John ends up tagging along back to the labs at Barts, and becoming acquainted with a most remarkable man, the likes of which he has never met in all his years.

John Watson stops the unremitting _watchingwaitingneeding, _embedded within him, deeper than the bullet could have gone, deeper than any wound, when he meets Sherlock Holmes. He questions the man, but not because he is a curiosity as others see him, but because John genuinely wants to know. To find out more, and although he is not able to deduce a person's life story from a glance at the mud on their shoes or the marks on their hands, he finds himself trying to understand Sherlock, attempting to have him fit into knowledge and wisdom all his lifetimes have provided, and coming up irritatingly short.

Magic courses, gleaming, violent, giddy in his veins, awaking something long dormant – _"Want to see some more?"_ the detective asked him, and_ "Oh God, yes" _was all John could have ever replied, because he knows even then he is unable to deny Sherlock anything. It's a realisation of something, a fruition, come to light, to life, and instead of the_ waiting_ that he has done for centuries – and now he sees in the flesh what he has been waiting for – John is _wanting. _Wanting Sherlock; dark hair, like tyre tracks, like tarmac, like the lines on maps of the Underground; grey eyes the colour of concrete, of high-rise buildings, of the steely dawn that greets London when the day is too early for most, and those eyes spark with the suggestion of running, of danger, excitement, adventure and never, never boredom. Sherlock is a child of London, in the trace of his angular features and urban sensibilities, a solitary man in a place filled with millions of people, and to John it's like the city made someone just for him, someone who fits, is completely his opposite even if somehow they work, even though Sherlock is one of those wild untamed men who lives by nobody's rules but his own, who needs no-one, wants no-one.

But John wants Sherlock.

_Mine, _he thinks (_knows_) when he has a spare moment in between cases and criminals and running – oh God, running faster than he's ever ran, and _loving_ every second –, when he sees the man leaping over house furniture because he can't be bothered to walk around the sofa, when the man coils up in front of the TV, brow furrowed, some great supernova of a thought gripping him with intensity, even once when he caught the man asleep, expression lax, peaceful, like instead of the death and human misery he dealt with daily his mind was engaged in softer imaginings. _Mine/Sherlock, _John thinks, and the two words are interchangeable, because he will protect this man with everything he has, every portion of his being, because he cannot afford to lose him. Not after it's taken so long to find him. John can't go back to being alone, to _waiting, _not now, not after this. _Sherlock is his, _he tells himself firmly, committing to the comment with an unwavering honesty.

And London feels the impact they make together being stronger than it could ever have been with them apart; the crime that is dealt with, the lowering stress levels of Scotland Yard because the detective is in their hair less, more likely to be back at Baker Street, with John. And London notes how the two are with each other, sees the glances that linger too long and the touches that are too purposeful to be momentary, and tells no-one else that such desires are reciprocated by both parties.

The day those desires are acted upon, that bond finally admitted, a first kiss _taken, given, offered, _ has the best weather ever put down on record, and the sky over inner city central London is a clear, unblemished blue.

But John doesn't tell Sherlock about the magic. Not even when he has the chance to. Wants to, wants to so badly sometimes the magic sparks up inside of him in frustration (and it was difficult explaining to Sherlock how exactly he'd shorted out the electrics at the back of the TV). But when it comes down to it, John doesn't let him Sherlock in because he's scared, worried, frightened. The world rotates, moves on, grows up in some areas and is woefully ignorant in others, and the thankfully widely held believe that magic is exaggerated rumour passed on from old pagan religions, means that John wont get tied to a stake these days for who he is. Wont be hunted down, killed, be treated as an outcast – because humans have always been afraid of what they don't understand, what they don't _want_ to understand. All the same, John is scared. Not of Sherlock, knows that the man would never hurt him deliberately, but scared of how Sherlock will react if he knows. Sherlock is only human, no matter his unique personality and capabilities, and John is all too aware of how people react when they find out.

John has the internal fear of Sherlock shouting at him, citing betrayal, fear, not understanding, not being able to and leaving – _and John imagines empty rooms in Baker Street and constant rainfall and numb hurt and again emptyemptyempty inside, _not _waiting _anymore because he's found what he was waiting for but _wanting _what he can no longer have, has lost.

Trust issues, his psychologist told him. She was at least right about that.

And that affects things. Because Sherlock is a detective, the best, his skills in observation unparalleled except perhaps by Mycroft, and even then it needs that something, that glimmer that is unnamed and beautiful even while it's deadly, something that Sherlock has in spades. It makes sense that at some point Sherlock would start asking awkward questions. _Where are you going?, _he'd query as John was creeping out of the house, having sensed disturbances down by the Thames, checking it's not anything back, anything that'll be a threat (to Sherlock/London). _Where have you been?, _he saidwhen John had been gone definitely longer than the time it took to buy some milk. But John has been playing the lying game, conjuring deceptions, for many turns, for his many laps round the cosmic track, and is shamefully practised at it.

But even though Sherlock doesn't know what John keeps secret, he is all too aware that there is something; that he is not getting John, the _whole_ of John. Magic is a part of the man, made him, formed him, moulded him, sings in his skin, ingrained in bone, muscle, marrow, and every atom, every particle of his humanity shares the space with something different. Special. Lined with history, memory, and it obviously frustrates Sherlock that John doesn't trust him with whatever it is he's hiding. The irritation manifests itself in sulky silences and an increase in the number of experiments in the fridge, and sometimes they argue without even knowing what they're raising their voices for, and outside it's raining and it's all John's fault.

But they work, despite it. They are balanced, and this is right, and regardless of secrets and the faults and idiosyncrasies of both, John is happy, truly happy, for the first time in a long time, and even Sherlock appears to be more grounded and content. He flashes the doctor that quick flirt of a smile, his 'just-for-John' smile that John has never seen him use for anybody else, and it makes the man grin, in the completely free manner he had almost forgotten how to achieve, his heart lighter, something inside him burning, igniting, emboldened, and it's like the thrill of the chase, the spark of magic, but all in the smile of one man.

And although it's not perfect yet, not finished, still fumbling new moments sharing the times when the teasing they pass back and forth to each other is as though they've been friends, been together for so much longer than they have, John is content. He has Sherlock, and it's all he really wants.

And then one day, something threatens that.


	2. Chapter 2

_AN/ I know... I'm sorry, first of all about the long time in getting this up, and secondly for extending this into an extra part instead of the promised two. It just got out of hand. _*_tentative_* _Here's some more fic... to make up for this? _

_References to ACD's **The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton. **_

_Pairing: John/Sherlock_

* * *

><p><strong>Legacy<br>****2/3**

London knows something is wrong. Scries it from the puddles, the heavy damp in the air. Dips into the Dreaming, the realm where dreams and imagination are the strongest and magic can pass through freely, and checks with fervent patience the troubled visions of seers and soothsayers, analysing, cross-referencing. The way the runes fall from a wrinkled gypsy's hand and bounce as they hit ground, translates the shadowy indefinable shapes present in dreams and the reveries of oracles into something recognisable; a tall sooty haired London child, hawk-like, piercing glance surveying all, and behind him – always with him, loyal, _companion/partner _– a healer whose eyes have seen too many years and too many hardships.

The city knows very well who these figures are.

Something is going to happen, a looming monolith in a close future, and the signals are muddled, difficult to make out. The images are tinctured with danger, _bad, evil_, the lingering threat of death, like the Pool – and London remembers the bombs and the consulting criminal and the five pips, and wishes that this will not be a repeat – and then, more overpowering, the scent of magic, the healer's magic. Bold and bright, immense and inconsolable. Try as they might, no one who is aware of this storm's coming can uncover whether this is the making or breaking of something.

None the less, London tries to warn the two men it knows the trouble is coming for. The city is protective, anxious and worried, showing its concern in the increase of traffic congestion around the major thoroughfares and the discontent of the alley cats and birds, and it overcompensates; when Sherlock first thinks of calling a black cab, one is sent immediately with unnatural speed for fear that the something will take place while the two are waiting on the pavement. London festers and brews, fusses over its children. They're on a case – it is easy to tell, the purposeful strides of Sherlock, the softly muttered 'brilliant' from John, the contented buzz from both – but the city takes the time to swaddle the men in tighter shadows that stretch out further when they go out onto the streets – _John's blood is pounding, his feet chasing the pavement along the alleys of St Giles, laughing, panting, and he isn't listening to the warnings the magic at the heart of London is trying desperately to send his way. _

London smoulders in vexation, in the deep-rooted dissatisfaction of not knowing _what _exactly is the danger until it is right upon them, and so by day, all the trains on every line are late, passengers grumpy and irate for reasons they can't quite explain, prone to snapping more than usual, and the rooks that gather around the aluminium statue in Piccadilly Circus squawk and fly south.

And that night, everyone has bad dreams.

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><p>It is three in the morning, Big Ben informs the city in the resonant hour counts, the deep peal of the chiming bell. John is sleeping, curled up, his knees at the level of his chest, fidgeting, oddly restless, and the other side of the double bed is cold and undisturbed, a flat expanse having not been slept in. Sherlock is still up, fulfilling his usual propensity for needing less sleep than most as he awaits for the outcome of an important experiment (John is glad, because it means he'll see the back of that head in the fridge, the one that's been there so long not only is it beginning to stink out the kitchen, but it's become such a familiar accoutrement to the general environment that John's thought about naming it more than once).<p>

There is someone inside 221b Baker Street. Stranger, invader, and no good will come of this. There is the sharp bitter tang of foreign magic in the living room, sticking out like an unwanted smell in an house that is so used to containing a bubble of only two people. This is the old tale of a confrontation, but the player is not one that London recognises.

There is a murmur of voices, the self-assured commentary of a low baritone, a theatrical reveal, the rise of the curtain, the final puzzle piece slotting, and then – _listen_, something says, so London listens – the arrogance tint present in another voice. A criminal, whose footsteps have dogged the last three crime scenes Sherlock has been summoned to by a well-meaning DI who is in over his head and wishes he wasn't. Sherlock – the clever, clever man he is, brilliant and aloof, and who isn't thinking even now that he's in a room with a man who is thinking of killing him – is reeling off details in an almost lyrical fashion; _Charlie Milverton, you're a blackmailer, unemployed, never succeeded in many ventures, your victims wouldn't pay you, would they, dared to consider going to the police so you got rid of them out of cowardly fear that you would be discovered, there is enough evidence from the crime scenes and a lack of a solid alibi to put you away for life. _

London is half proud of the deductions, and fearful, because it knows that Milverton will not hesitate to kill again, and knows too what it blackmailed those now lifeless people with – the secret of their small magic – which he then stole from their corpses, bound it to himself with his own weak charms.

Then there is the sound of something breaking, a scuffle, bangs and thumps. Baker Street is used to these noises, it has to be; the explosions from Sherlock's chemistry set, the punch of bullets through wallpaper and plasterboard of the wall, but these are not the same. This is a threat, attack, the first aggression that starts conflicts and wars. One of it's own (and that means the other is involved automatically) is in danger.

_Wake up, _London shouts in John Watson's dreams, disobeying the protocol for such instances, getting personally involved. _Wake up, _it insists, and it's voice is dry as brickwork, speeding fast and spattered with the colours of the city at night, blares like impatient car horns, flickers in the quick alternations of traffic lights and it frantically supplies its explanation in images, frenzied, panicked; a street lamp bursts in an overload of electricity outside.

_Sherlock is in danger, Sherlockpartnersoulmate, __Sherlock,__ and it's from one of us. Wake up John Watson. _

John's eyes snap open, no longer tired, wide awake and his magic throbbing, tumultuous inside his chest, punctuated only by instinct, control, the aching calm in the heat of battle as his mind plots, plans, heeding the noises from the living room even while his magic is mired in the here-and-now. In that moment, he shows a glimpse of the many forms he has taken, and is all at once quick-thinking, but slow to form a conclusion, his thoughts bumbling, tripping over themselves while speeding and forming, dramatically rising like a tidal fury.

John Watson is a man made of memory, of different men who shouldn't fit, a patchwork soul, but he loses himself, his very identity of complexities and contradictions (a doctor and a healer, but a solider and a warrior) boiled down to the basics.

John Watson is a man who is in love, who is half of a greater whole, and right now, fills an archetype of wanting to_ protectsavekillhurt_ for the man he loves.

Sherlock is capable of computing clues and details into one organisable form into a mere glance, a hundred calculations moulding, collapsing, rising again renewed in accordance to additional data. John has similar skills when it comes to his own natural realm. Even as he is bounding out of bed, feet finding the ground, and snatching up his Browning pistol from where it lays upon his bedside table, his mind is testing out, sensing everything, taking in anything he can use, observations of a more elemental nature, and he might not be able to reach the heights of Sherlock (who can tell if a woman is having an affair by the state of her ring or where a body was killed by the type of mud on their shoes) but he can still note things few other people can.

_There is the markers of bad magic in the house, hot-tempered and assured, smells of jarring discomfort, practitioner, he's giddy with success, magic spikes with laughter, it's not his, the magic, it's mixed of different distinguishing features (the feminine silken texture of a women's magic, cayenne spice and metal-work heat – two men) therefore stolen, needed to have killed people to get it (One women, two men = the case, their case, his and Sherlock's), rarely has managed strong spells before, penchant for the theatrics but little natural talent – murderous intent..._

_Sherlock, _his mind/magic tells him, emphasising that above all else, _Sherlock, danger, wrong,_ and breathing in, John draws up his magic to its full capacity, the words of spoken spells and wordless power at the tip of his tongue ready should he need to employ them, and creeps over to the door.

He would try for silence, for the element of surprise, but something cuts through the crashes and bumps, a strangled cry, and John thinks nothing at all anymore but _Sherlock _because there is nothing else that is more important – Sherlock is life and love and all the winding emotions in-between, and straying from that path leads to the broken desert he inhabited before, broken thoughts from a thankless war, damaged shoulder, damaged dreams, and he cannot be wrecked as he was then – as he flings the door of their bedroom open onto the scene playing out in the living room.

The grey chair is flipped over onto its side, papers flung slapdash – not that they usually held any semblance of order – to the floor from where they've lost the balance of the tower they made on the mantle of the fireplace. The window that looks out upon the London streets is ajar by a crack, and there is a scorch mark that ruins the wallpaper to one side of the room – Mrs Hudson will not be happy, she'll add the damages to their rent (again) – taking pride of place next to the bullet-ridden smiley face formed from yellow spray paint from the Blind Banker case.

And amidst all of this chaotic ambience, there is Sherlock. Clothed in his pyjama's and his usual navy dressing gown – appearing as though he had the intention to retire to bed tonight – he is pressed up flush against the section of wall next to the fireplace, his hands scrambling at his throat, attempting a useless purchase, unable to breathe, his throat constricted even though there is nothing around his neck. His bare feet are a foot above the ground, kicking, and he is trying to struggle against the forces that have hold of him, is failing by the way his fighting is getting weaker the more life is choked out of him.

_Why, _John wonders, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, _does Sherlock have the tiring talent for getting into these situations where there are angry people wanting to kill him? _He admits at some points when Sherlock is being deliberately difficult, he can see the general appeal, especially as now he's being deprived of vital sleep that he's bee missing out on the last few nights.

A sorcerer stands in front of the window; _Charlie Milverton, _John's magic supplies. Hand outstretched in a grand gesture, orchestrating his craft with a wicked smirk of satisfaction, he looks every bit the part of some mystical pantomime sage; long purple velvet cloak that skims the skin around his ankles, necklaces around his neck of pentangles and protective and offensive charms, all silver and brash. The staff, an elongated wooden affair with the topmost branches clutching onto a glass orb, is the final finishing touch, and taking this all in, John can't help but think, _Oh please. _He feels slightly affronted to have this man taking up space in his living room, one that dresses over the top like a walking cliché, and gives all their kin a bad name and an embarrassing image.

Milverton's eyes, dark and having been intently watching Sherlock asphyxiate to death, flash upwards in a smooth motion as he catches sight of John. And not only is does his fashion sense need a complete makeover, but he also appears to be incredibly obtuse at reading his natural environment, hasn't tested the surroundings to read the obvious markers of another man's magic – much more powerful, much older than his own – as it doesn't hit him that John standing before him, looking quite harmless in a white t-shirt and his boxers, hair ruffled from sleeping, but eyes shrewd and alert could most likely kill him with a few murmured words.

"I think your pet has come to try and save you Sherlock" Milverton laughs to himself, and it's booming and flashy, deliberately echoing, and with a cruel grin that has more related to a grimace then anything vaguely humorous, he gives a flick of his wrist, releasing his hold on the detective like a puppet with its strings cut. Sherlock drops down as gravity takes over, crumpling on the sudden impact with the floorboards, coughing and spluttering and gasping in air as though it's been going out of fashion, his slender violinist fingers at his own throat, reassuring himself of no restriction.

He is red in the cheeks, unnaturally rosy and exerted except for the rest of his face, pale as moonlight, and when his eyes flick over to see John – John whose fists clench to see his partner treated like a rag doll by some upstart in a cloak, John who without meaning to is calling up a storm to gather over Marylebone, clouds of rain huddling together in mass gatherings of grey that crackle and hiss with electricity – the quicksilver pupils are filled with something heavy, and John wants to banish it away and pluck every bad thought away and hold the man tight, not let go, not for one moment –

"Shame." Milverton continues, smiling, his mouth a vicious cut across arrogant features. John hates that smile immediately, and some spells jostle in his head but he says none of them, keeps his peace even though in his head charms for taking this man apart, for making his blood boil, his skin erupt in hives, making him blind or deaf or mute bubble up like violent prayers.

The sorcerer's eyes flash gold, and the air sizzles, whines with bad magic, the hair on John's forearms standing on end at proximity to it "I could have let him live"

Another proud arch of his hand and a snarled word in the tongue of the Old Religion, and John is airborne fleetingly, taken by surprise before his back slams into the wall behind him, the contact brutal and unforgiving. His gun – not that it was going to be much use in this combat – is cast aside clanging in a leaden cry on the ground, and the bulb to the lamp near the TV fuses, cracks and blows as a manifestation of John's shock as the doctor crumples down onto the floorboards. Milverton doesn't suspect anything, assumes it is an after affect of his own magic, as unused to it as he is, almost looking pleased and smug that the spell actually worked at all, an ignorance which John would be grateful for if he wasn't so busy getting acquainted with the ground.

He's not dead, always a blessing – his human structure hasn't broken or suffered dilapidating injury – there was a reason he was called lucky in Afghanistan (_a second sense for danger, they had laughed, and everyone knew that when John Watson – a luckier bastard you wouldn't find, fellow __soldiers joked, a good bloke, honest, solid as a bloody rock – had a bad feeling, something bad was definitely coming; 'you got the Sight, Johnny', Bill Murray had told him, an hour before John got shot, and John had grinned and told him that things like that didn't exist)_

What has just punched him into the wall is weak magic, John can sense as the lingering electric sensation tingles, and he almost is affronted that he was caught out by it, as the after-effects are negate by his own magic quickly. Any additional symptoms – there are feeble back-up charms woven into the fabric of the spell, designed to paralyse him in place should he have survived, but John hasn't got this far without having learnt a few counter tricks of his own – are unwoven and disposed of. However, his shoulder is screaming from the impact, and he has to shake off dizziness that threatens at the periphery of consciousness, tempts him like the Fair Folk to where he does not want to stray. Now is not the time for human hurts to distract him. _Sherlock, _he thinks. He grits his teeth at the agony in the mess of scar tissue under his collar bone, promises himself a paracetamol or something stronger immediately after.

For a deceiving few moments, John lies there where he has fallen, unmoving, still like death, and Milverton still hasn't read any of the signs that warn him from this path, for he nods to himself, satisfied that at least one threat has been dealt with. Sherlock however calls out his name, his throat rough and pained, creating the word "John" in an aching strangled plea; desperate, distressed, fearful, _John, _it says, _John, tell me you're alright!_ Both animated Sherlock and frozen John think back to Pools and madmen and bombs for a suspended second.

The sorcerer laughs again, and it's ugly like a bruise, the tone a savage and mocking thing, a parody of human affection. Then he gives an exaggerated sigh, idly clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as though the whole situation has bored him somewhat. This game is reaching its conclusion.

"Don't worry" he sneers, and his hand reaches out again, foreboding, fingers curling inwards like a claw "You'll join your friend soon enough"

Magic is scratching at the edges of John's mind, baying, rousing him out of any introspection of the jolting pain in his shoulder, and it is insistent, howling, whining, taking command, saying _you/I _need to stop him – _Sherlock, _it stresses, imperative, _Sherlock – _and with that one name comes all the connotations that comes with it. The protectiveness and comfort and safety, juxtaposed with the danger and intrigue and adventure, and threaded through the whole affair a blinding love; the love that can engulf everything, love for a man who is fascinating, wonderful, who healed John without meaning to the first case they were on, a man who John cannot lose to the finality of death because it will break him. And John understands implicitly what he has to do.

Milverton creates a self-assured stance, holding out his hand, directly aiming at Sherlock, and there are misused words of power (_they don't belong to him, they are stolen, abused, they are magic, real magic that is there for purposes of good, they are John's/London's and this man doesn't deserve them_) on his tongue. He doesn't even notice that John has pulled himself up, his shoulder flaring but no noise crossing his lips, the pain pushed to the back of his mind, doesn't even notice that the man is standing with an offensive posture, feet planted, spaced apart evenly, distracted by his own premature victory before John speaks.

"You will not touch him" he hisses, his tone filled with a faint glimmer of darkness, and the atmosphere around his body has a heart of its own, thrumming, beating, alive and energised. And in his veins, magic rejoices and fizzes, hums a wordless tune ingrained in memory, a nursery rhyme perhaps, because it has not been free for so long, has not been allowed to do what comes naturally; a bondsman to the pretences of John Watson who has tried since eons past to act normal, to be less than he is – _stupid, idiot, human, and yes, he can play his part so well often he almost forgets – _when he is so much more.

Milverton jolts, eyes widening at the man he before believed a mere human nuisance, but he grins, relishing the sudden challenge, a thirst to prove himself the better of the two. Layman's bravado is summoned and put into practice as he draws up a flame in the palm of his hand, writhing with flickering fire but retaining a globular shape, and he aims and shoots it at John.

If the doctor was as human as so many had believed for so long, it would have felled him, made him cry out as the fire impacted, but not now, no more pretence, the magic crows and the walls tremor and the curtains whip and shake from a ghostly wind. _We (_John/Magic and they are the one and the same, fused, bonded_) remember emperors who thought they were kings – _and the sorcerer can definitely read the magic now to understand what he is saying_ – kings who were fisher kings and the Once and Future King, and We have outlived them all, and will last longer than these bricks and stones that will crumble away_, _so who are _you _to think you can defeat **us**?_

John bats the flame away, and it harmlessly extinguishes to one side, pathetic and snuffed out with ease. His eyes glow, spark golden and blazing, and the sorcerer's staff quakes and then snaps in two with a resonant crack, the man dropping it like he's been burned. The sky outside is catching with electricity, rumbling, and everyone perceptive to the markers of magic senses the current shift, the power and the rage and the fury, and knows to keep away from Baker Street tonight.

John walks forward towards Milverton who is suddenly scared, retreating with purposeful strides and a deadly poise. _What are you?, _the sorcerer's magic asks – a magic he never had claim to, something that isn't his, something weak and propped up only by additional paraphernalia – and John's magic, that is so much stronger, conceived from the earth and the sky, tinted with the power of the city, a _home_, home that this man is daring to threaten, whispers _Warlock _in a timbre that speaks of unmovable stone and infinite sand, the violent wars he has seen, continual ages and _power_, enduring ageless power.

And Milverton shakes like he's withdrawing from a high because he recognises John Watson for who he is; the names he has been, a figure woven throughout the strands of history, looks into his eyes and sees the dark night and the burning hearts of stars, constellations and galaxies, the fire like a supernova and the chilling ice, and finally understands what it is to truly _fear. _

Sorcerer's, however, have never been renowned for their sense of self-preservation, and Milverton's eyes blacken with something bitter, cruel and desperate – _how dare you think I will bow to you, _he growls at John, _you are forgotten, warlock, you are a relic, you are nothing compared to what I will become. _His attention focuses back on Sherlock, and he laughs at John, directing his hand again to the detective – _you might be strong, but in the end, you are only human, and the human heart is oh so fragile – _ and John is reminded, just for a moment, of a engulfing fear, of the light fracturing off the glassy surface of the Pool, of a well-dressed consulting criminal, of words that ring in nightmare, thoughts and memories he forbids himself from recalling during daylight hours; "_You know what I'll do if you don't leave me alone Sherlock? I will burn you. I will burn the _heart _out of you"_

Sherlock is John's heart as much as it works the other way round. Only John's heart wont be the only thing to die. He's seen it, in dreams stoked up by latent fear of relying so completely upon someone else; knows his body will burn, awash with grief, and he'll fade away like a memory, and every lifetime after that will be a struggle, death and grief and regret for eternal years, and he'll either drift aimlessly through life with no bright emotion to filter through, or there will be nothing to stop him from becoming a monster swallowed by vengeance. There would never be a point he would stop hunting until he gained revenge.

Milverton only gives another one of those smiles, whispering words that Sherlock wont understand but John does all too well, incantations that conjure up flame, a restless catching red flame that is directed straight at the consulting detective's heart.

All that John can think is, _No. _

_**No.**_

"You will not touch him" John says again – in a booming voice, ancient and wise, and silvered with a violent contempt, and it sounds like lashing rain and fearsome wind and old old magic from the very core of the earth – and he casts his arm out, holding it in front of him, palm facing forward and fingers splayed.

A wordless shield of glittering blue forms around Sherlock, and to Sherlock, there is suddenly the smell of spring in the room, the tender first grassy buds of the season, the shield deflecting the bolt, the energy puttering before shutting down into nothing. And then John looms over Milverton, bears teeth and the raw magic from his soul and his eyes glow, wild and strong and burnished with gold, and the ground shakes and shudders, and it's a miracle Mrs Hudson hasn't woken up.

The sky spits out a scream of anger in a rumbling growl of thunder, and John murmurs something else, a word, just one because that's all he needs, and the sorcerer cries out in anger and fear, the shout wrought from his lips before his eyes roll back in his head and he drops to the ground, a solid weight, his cloak a limp cover over him.

He is not dead, unconscious and will be for some time. John is a doctor, healer, stitches up wounds and hurts, although he has killed before, has killed for Sherlock and he would have done it again tonight, the magic roaring _rage-anger-MURDER _at the idea of what the man would have done to Sherlock. But it was not necessary. As the man falls and impacts in a graceless drop, wind is flicked up, and a vague barely-seen light seeps out from his body, his magic dissipating, back into the pores of London where it belongs.

In the morning – although it's already morning now technically – they will drop him off at Scotland Yard and he can be tried for his human crimes of murder and extortion, his magic stripped from him so he can do no more harm.

Then it is as though he's just realised that it is over, that all is quiet and that Sherlock has not moved, nor made any comment on what he has seen. The magic simmers down, subdued, tentative, and his thoughts oscillate between running from this house, down the seventeen steps like the coward he could be, or being here for the outcome of this. Deciding with a heavy heart on the latter, John stands as though a statute, waiting for Sherlock to say something, say anything.

London holds its breath.


	3. Chapter 3

_AN/ I'm quite sad that this is finished – although I'm not 100% sure about this chapter – and will most likely end up writing more Magic!John fics because I love the concept so much. An especially vicious plot bunny for a Study in Emerald AU reared its head as I was writing, so I'll have to go deal with that first. But until then, here's the final part for all you wonderful people who gave feedback and favourited this fic. If you have any comments, good or bad, please don't hesitate to review. _

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><p><em><strong>Legacy<br>**__**3/3**_

John does not move for the longest time. Again he is waiting.

Wanting Sherlock to say something. Fill in the cold space where the first confrontation ends, and where this one is overdue from starting.

He wants him to say _something. _Anything. Angered frustrated shouts and that fire in his eyes that is so often held back by logical rationality and control – John would take these and run with them, deal with his penance. Not this silence, a hollow thing like a collapsed star, the ashen lifeless shade of a black dwarf, embittered and frozen in the blank ebony canvas of infinite space, not the way Sherlock is still kneeling on the ground, having passed the unconscious form of Milverton a cursory, almost dismissive glance, how his gaze is upon the ground, then chronicling the damage done to the wall, and looking everywhere, _everywhere _but at _John. _

There is an absence here._ Of words, of acceptance, of compassion, companionship – no man is an island but for the moment they are completely separate, achingly separate men who should never be parted – of thoughts of betrayal or fear or anger. _There is just the silence.

And God, it's killing him.

"Sherlock?" John whispers finally, splitting the name into its compounded syllables. _Sher-lock. _Like a murmur, like a prayer. His voice is not the same one as before, is not strong and wise and powerful – _formed from stone and sky and the weathering of ages – ,_ but human, younger somehow, scared, tentative – _built from the bones of insecurity, eternal doubt, the dizzying mortal weakness of the heart. _Shy. "God, Sherlock, I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you..."

"Just..." Sherlock pauses, his voice neither angry, nor loud, but again filled with that _absence, _ bland dull unflavoured speech, monotone, soft as down. All of the lights in the city flash red for a moment, linger on edge, wondering, watching, hoping. "Give me a minute John"

They both are silent. The sort of unnatural scraped out silence where time is a grieving mourning wraith veiled in black and unheeding to any professional things, and John cannot assign an estimation to how long they stand there because it feels like it could have lasted eons or just a few fleeting seconds. Like a dream, where you don't remember where the head of the circle, the beginning of the story starts, and where it's tail concludes the annular shape. It is like a dream, yet it is so obviously not, because John has met Morpheus, whose proud features bear so much resemblance to a certain consulting detective, and he knows the signature of the Endless. This whole catastrophe is all too clearly reality.

John does not know what to expect, expects nothing but knows a man – oh such a beautiful, brilliant man – like Sherlock Holmes always gives something. A quip, boast, insult, perception, an angle no-one else sees. Rarely a thanks, and even rarer a true honest compliment, but always something in the end; the answer to the riddle, the piece of the jigsaw, the whole sordid story of murder's in locked rooms and the darkest hearts and vices of people on display in the explanations of a detective who does not seem to care either way what they have done, only that the case is solved.

Sherlock doesn't even give John a glance. And the uncertainty for the time he waits for Sherlock to speak defines him as much as the silence does.

This is too much and not enough at the same time.

Finally Sherlock stands, unfolding his long form, smooths down the rucks and creases on the fabric of his dressing gown. Slowly, delicately, every movement concise and accurate and grating on every nerve that John possesses, every shred of dignity. _Sherlock, please. Just say something. _

And then, finally, he stares hard at John, the man, his flatmate, friend, _partner_ he thought he knew.

Sherlock is rarely wrong. Correlations of relative data, overlooked portions of an endless stream of numbers and notations - _"Her coat is slightly damp; she's been in heavy rain the last few hours..." _he said in that first first case of many_ "...she has an umbrella in her left-hand pocket, but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind, too strong to use her umbrella"("That's fantastic" the soldier with an appreciative smile blurts out, "You know you do that out loud?" the detective replies, but a second later, he's telling the man it's fine and meaning it) – _ and with the right data, Sherlock always reaches the right conclusion.

Sometimes he takes alternate paths that lead to irregular conclusions that don't fit, so he scratches that, renew – look again – and then it all fits, slots into perfect place. It is a discomforting experience to have been kept in the dark so long. To have been wrong, not just in one case, but for months, months of being around his subject, cataloguing everyday patterns and habitual motions – _John has tea first thing, then a shower every morning, and only at night when he's been rushing and when it's been a bad night with more nightmares, his tea always has less milk and one sugar more than usual... – _so how could Sherlock have missed _this_?

John cannot imagine how Sherlock is going to react to being suddenly and jarringly comforted by a whole world he knows nothing about. Sherlock understands human motivation, knows the science of deduction, of murder and puzzles; a man of rational mind, logical. He puts his faith in chemicals and the tell-tale signs from mud tracks and marks on the body and the condition of wedding rings. He could never have even begun to believe that there is a world beyond and beneath him, where there are trolls under Tower Bridge and sorcerer's marking the wallpaper of his living room. It is not a matter of the knowledge not being important, isn't like the solar system that Sherlock so conveniently deleted from his mind. It's a whole other world. A secret.

And John didn't tell him.

"That was real, yes?" Sherlock asks. He chooses every word with care, reigning in a tight control, owning every word that slips from his mouth. His eyes are hooded, lights hiding in shadowed corners, pupils wider than normal in the dark dawn, wreathed by a corona of grey, and John's magic is tempted to reach out again, _readtasteknow _stronger than he ever has before what Sherlock is thinking. John knows the words to peel back the layers of a mind, knows how to root out falsity ; it's ambiguously moral magic, charms the doctor has always steered clear of – _do no harm, John promised when he became a doctor the first time, and every time after that – _but there is a glinting vehement desire to know, _now. _Know whether Sherlock is mad, or angry, if he'll leave, if John will be left with a hollowed out Baker Street all too neat with none of the disorganised chaos that Sherlock leaves in a trail of entropy, silent rooms and no thrill, no Sherlock and _emptyemptyempty _and he just can't stand the _waiting _any longer, waiting to know, to hear his fate.

But he doesn't say the words to charms to reveal in truth the opinions of Sherlock, never has. Because it's not his right to invade the detective's privacy like that.

"Yeah" he replies finally.

"You're a sorcerer" Sherlock reiterates, and he looks embarrassed that he's said something he imagines is so painfully obvious considering what he's just witnessed. Sherlock Holmes is never one to say aloud what is obvious, except when he's unsure perhaps, feels the data is corrupted or that he might be saying something wrong. Yet his voice is not unsure, and the statement itself is so matter-of-fact that it's frightening. Sherlock's eyes gleam, but the lighting is off.

"Warlock" Johnmurmurs correctively, and if Sherlock asks he'd go into the minutiae and details of the whole hierarchy of power – _Warlock's are the strongest, sorcerer's are cheap-trick magicians who learn the basic craft or steal it. God, Sherlock, I'm sorry, I was born with this, I can't help who I am... – _ would tell him everything. No secret he has kept was ever as big as this one. "I'm a Warlock"

There is another pause. Pregnant, like a cloud heavy with rain before a downpour. John's heart hurts, and everything feels heavy, a weighted internal fear. The London magic that lingers outside on the doorstep in the form of a nameless alley cat, whose owners didn't keep her long enough to give her a name, so instead she was claimed by London, mangy fur stretched over delineated ribs, senses the emanating emotions from the upper Baker Street rooms, and it's an uncomfortable waiting period, as though the height of summer.

Not the airy summers where the sunlight dapples windows and pavements and every pedestrian glows in short sleeved shirts and light fabric trousers or skirts; no, it's the uncomfortable choking heat worsened by the spluttering engines of cars on every road, the tarmac sizzling, where every window makes a room a desert conservatory, and everyone hopes for rain. London outside frets over what it cannot control, because humanity can be pitiless, dismissive, and it would never expect it of Sherlock – _London child, ours, John's, Sherlock of 2-2-1-b, who holds his heart like a garrison, knows cobbled roads and sprawling city lore – _but in the end, he is only human.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Sherlock asks abruptly, eyes sharp and voice even sharper. It takes every iota of John's control not to flinch at that. If he didn't know the detective, the doctor would think the tone he was using was one of indifference. Cold like concrete, stone, cut off like the slats over boarded windows. Yet this is the important question, and John hears the hint of betrayal there, disappointment, like he expected something of John and the doctor let him down.

And that _hurts, _stabs, twists in his gut, a scalding spasm under the cage of his ribs, wounds as much as the silence. This is what has bothered Sherlock the most about the whole thing. The fact that John kept this from him; something so big, important, such a part of him.

John thinks of lying, but Sherlock would know, would read it easily because John wouldn't even try to hide it, and even so, he's so tired. _Of hiding, lies, holding back, pretending, of endless cycles of secrets and playing the fool, idiot. _It's not fair on either of them.

He straightens, pulling his shoulders back from their tensed up posture. "I wanted to"

"That wasn't the question" Sherlock is giving him no leeway. Not that John deserves any.

"Probably not" He admits quietly. "You weren't meant to ever find out"

"Why?" Sherlock's lips tighten, form a thin line that cuts across his face.

John knows why, as he's rationalised it to himself often enough, but he doesn't know how to put it into words. He's never been good with them.

"_Why_, John?" Sherlock takes a step closer, John tempted to move back in sync, away, far away, to not have to deal with this. There is a desperation there in Sherlock's posture, the man bristling not with anger (that may come later) but with a need to understand, to figure out motive, reasoning. Sherlock's long fingers clench, tuck themselves into his palm to make a fist, and his eyes aren't moving from John's face, and the doctor knows that Sherlock is taking every motion apart for clues, every twitch of his jaw or tension in his posture; Sherlock is reading him, divining from the way John is half turned away from him, like he can't bear to look at him and see the hatred, is reading him like John can read runes and the threaded charms stitched into pentangles. And Sherlock can read an entire man's life from merely a glance, and John knowing that feels so vulnerable under the smoky gaze of the detective.

"Because..." John fumbles for the right words, fidgeting with his fingers, combing an errant hand through his hair. _Why is this so hard? _ "well, because... it's _magic, _Sherlock." He gives a sigh, adjusts his stance so his weight is distributed onto the other leg, closing his eyes for a resigned moment before he speaks again.

He thinks about saying something along the lines of '_You wouldn't understand, Sherlock' _but that would be false, and perhaps rile the detective. Because Sherlock _would_ be able to understand. He makes a living out of being able to understand, and one thing he doesn't tolerate well is other people assuming things about him or questioning his abilities. Sherlock is completely capable of working through this.

"People don't... don't take finding out well" John starts slowly, and Sherlock doesn't interrupt him so he continues "They either get frightened and try and kill me, or run away screaming. I got used to it after a while but it doesn't mean I want to deal with it if it can be helped. The rare ones that say end up regretting it. "

Sherlock stiffens at this, his hands unclenching and then tightening further. John thinks he might be affronted by the fact that Sherlock thinks John could possibly imagine him reacting in such a mundane and pedestrian manner, but he doesn't even think that Sherlock could be angry on his behalf that the doctor has been treated in such a manner. John isn't looking in Sherlock's eyes, deliberately avoiding them, and so misses the barely noticeable flash of fury in the detective's expression, born from the way John said those words, described the reactions of stupid, unimportant people like it was nothing. Sherlock doesn't believe for one second that John has 'gotten used to it'.

"People get hurt because they know, Sherlock" John continues, and his eyes are misty and lost for a moment in recollection. Too many memories and a disproportionate number of negative ones. _Shouting, embittered phrases echoing in a plain room with a wooden door – Get out of my sight! – A clock flung from a mantle, it's face smashed and splintered – Demon! they scream, Demon! and John believes them – _ "They get hurt and they blame me, and they're right"

"I am not most people" The detective growls out, and at those words, John deflates visibly.

"No" he murmurs, in a tone almost scraping a whisper, devoid of all energy, small, shrunken words lacking fire. There is the arm of the couch nearby, and he sits down on that. He feels weary, a lethargy he would renounce and brush off if it didn't burrow so deep. "No, you're not"

John waits for lacerating words that he knows are coming. Some verbose, cutting narrative from Sherlock, sentences sharded, edged, and the continued long silence that sets in again, worse than obvious hatred, and his thoughts are a dank pit of increasing desperation, unchained, cranking out tightly held beliefs – _because this is an old story and this is how the plot goes now _– like an over wound watch, the ticking staccato, tumbling over each other, fast and furious as an argument, delving straight into his own masochistic thoughts –_ he's going to leave you, will hate you, and there is nothing scared or special in the promises you made to each other, not now, and all you'll have left, you coward, is the cool touch on skin where he last pressed a kiss like you ever meant anything to him..._

"What happens now?" Sherlock says finally. It's like an ultimatum, and it's barely a question in its shape and form, more a command for a response.

John considers this. He had assumed that he would have little choice in the outcome – jolting doors, slamming loudly, the world morphing into a charnel house, – and merely thinking about it has John bracing himself against the side of the sofa to ground himself. "It's your choice. I can make you forget that this ever happened if that's the choice you make"

Sherlock stiffens in vespertine stillness. "You would do that to me?" The suffix _without my permission _is all too clear. His words lilt, the query imbricating into something new, a buzzing question under the skin of his words, honed serious. It's asking only what it needs to. _Would you force me to forget this? _

John shakes his head, a graceless motion, a clear defined response. _No. _ "Only if you wanted it." He shuffles on his seat, face rinsed with the burgeoning dawn "If not, I can leave... I mean, I don't have much stuff so it wont take long to move out..."

"John" Sherlock stops him. He has moved closer, defying John any personal space. The constants of the noun grate and merge together, coalesce into something that isn't just a name. It's a meaning, a promise, an utterance that has power – there is magic in names, that goes beyond etymology (_John, meaning God is gracious, Sherlock, meaning fair-haired_; neither fit the owner by definition, John has no faith in God, whether He exists or not, and Sherlock's inky whorls resist his titling), but have power because it's the one true thing that belongs to a person, the first thing given to them after life. Sherlock says _John _and it means so much more. "I do not want you to go"

"What would you have me do?" John replies, wretched and hating how pathetic he sounds. Yet Sherlock for a moment does not respond, and reaches out to touch the skin of John's hand that rests on his knee, strokes the ridges of his knuckles in a surety of touch that surprises John.

"Stay"

"But what about... this?" John waves his free hand, "What about us?"

Sherlock frowns, gimlet eyes boring into John "Does this revelation mean that you no longer wish to be with me?"

"No!" The negation comes out harsher than intended "Of course not..."

"Then why should you feel that it would work the other way round?"

"You... you aren't angry?" John asks, and there is a hint of vulnerability in his voice, something glass-spun and fragile. Sherlock gives a small smile, or his approximation of one, a softening of his taut features, an upturn of the corners of his mouth.

"Don't be an idiot" he replies, and John has to smile at that, wetting his lips, moving to interlace his fingers with Sherlock's. He needs the assurance of touch, and Sherlock responds as though he's read the doctor's wishes, acting as a lodestar to slot their bodies closer, allowing the presence of each to saturate the space remaining.

"I could not be mad at you" Sherlock murmurs, "I just would rather you had told me. It is a part of you. And I love and accept everything that is yours" An ample smirk "Even your quite frankly awful taste in light entertainment programmes"

John laughs, lightly, a consoled sense of calm threading through him, knowing that if Sherlock is making jokes then maybe he is forgiven. He pauses again, indulging a thought idly that blooms fully formed with delicate petals into an idea. Then he fixes his eyes deep into Sherlock's, and sights what he expected to see there; the curiosity that still tarries, the wonder, like the aroused spur of a case or a new clue, a puzzle, something to solve, to work out, present in the animated dancing light of his pupils and the shades that came with them, the adventurous, esurient thirst to _know. _No one has ever wanted to understand John before. Has never looked at him with a glance that tries to take him apart. It humbles him.

"Would you like to see?" he asks. Sherlock tilts his head infinitesimally, blinking, his own version of a shocked pause. John does not need to clarify what he wants to show the detective.

"You would let me?"

John nods, and there is no need for words at this point. Removing his hands from Sherlock's grip, he places them either side of the man's face, his palm resting on his cheeks. He glances at Sherlock for a moment, just one selfish moment for him to absorb everything, before he leans his forehead against Sherlock's.

"Close your eyes" he whispers, and Sherlock smiles at him with such an expression of such complete trust John finds it hard to breath for a moment as dark lashes flutter closed on the doctor's bidding. John shuts his eyes, the magic sparking inside of him, bubbling and fizzling in his blood, impatient, then breathing out with a forbearing air, he allows it to flood through, following an unspoken command. There is a lambent golden shudder as John's magic connects with Sherlock, a glorious, sliding, fit of two halves.

And Sherlock is suddenly able to see everything.

John shows him a history that spans centuries, lifetimes, old lives and ancient languages, shows him every man he has ever been, the changing chameleon faces – _blonde hair flaxen as straw... green eyes like the first day of summer that shimmer with gold... the men he has been but always the same person beneath the skin –, _admits to a listening Sherlock his qualities and his so very human faults.

He presents to him images of empires that fell in blood or strife or were forgotten and blew away like the dust that remained, ages and rule of kings that lasted millennia able to be shown in a flash of colour, shows him the past he remembers like a childhood - _gaslight and horse and carriage, the jolt of hansom cab wheels over cobbles _– shows him the Beneath and the Below, the hidden things of London – _the ghost station of the underground between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn, the Seelie court and the Faery paths in St James Park. _

With a degree of pride, he shows Sherlock the London magic, strays and lingers on this, allows Sherlock to experience it; the touch of glossy metal, the grey slapping waters of the Thames, then the after-taste of smog and flickering phosphorous, the ways the stars are distant sentries in the sky and through them humanity gains a glimpse of its own insignificance in the monolithic scope of the universe.

And then the images hasten, flickering like the light from a camera obscura, and Sherlock's breath hitches at the assault, at the sheer amount of data to take in and compute. But John makes sure the transition is easy, wrestles control so that the glimmering pictures slow enough for Sherlock to take in. After a moment's self consultation, John invites Sherlock to go a level deeper, to share in sensations, not just the surface images. His magic questions the detective, making it clear that it is completely in Sherlock's hands, and he can feel Sherlock nod after a moment under his hands.

And then John shows him what no-one has ever been able to know before, exhibits every facet of his being for the scrutiny of another soul; the loneliness, the _waitingwaitingwaiting _that is as mournful a lament as the singing of ghosts on the Circle Line, shows him the beauty of the magic, John's magic, how it supports the foundations of every part of him, lets him sense for a fleeting second the incomprehensible feeling of power, that drives some mad with greed or desperation, and how close John has come to this at times.

How near he got to just snapping, his carefully sculpted restraints breaking because someone tried to hurt Sherlock – _how he could barely speak at the Pool, silent not from fear, but because the magic was baying, like acid trying to burn out of him, overwhelming him, and him able to do nothing but drown in it until he collapsed unable to sustain the tension and heightened pressure. _

And then, kinder, he trails one hand away from the side of Sherlock's face and instead takes his hand, locking their fingers, and tells him honestly, with a magic that cannot lie, how much he loves him. How Sherlock made him stop waiting and start wanting – John shows him the want, the crushing burning heat of it, like a bullet wound eviscerating the skin of his flesh, like being dowsed in flames that do not char skin, the orange light throwing into relief every line, every inch, every mark on Sherlock, from the hollow dip of his neck to the jutting bones of his hips, all of it John's.

John tells Sherlock how it's like a chase, a hunt, like the rush of energy when a final spell is cast, the ultimate syllable uttered, lets him know of the _violence, strain, fury_ when Milverton was going to kill Sherlock, _dare _ try and take what was _his_, tells him the extent of how John Watson is tied to Sherlock Holmes now; how he feels that this cycle of never-ending rebirths might be the last because he finally has this, has Sherlock, and that knowledge is glorious, and heady and as virulent as his magic.

And then John disconnects from Sherlock, drawing his hands away and their flesh which serves as the conduit apart, the detective panting, more an initial soft gasp from exertion and the jolting emergence from someone else's mind. Sherlock doesn't say anything immediately, is most likely lost in thought, mulling through all the things he has discovered tonight that he was never meant to see.

John is pallid, chilly in his boxers and thin cotton shirt, and is beginning to find the intermittent tremor in his left hand is returning along with the daylight outside, he imagines from exhaustion – he's out of practice using up so much Magic and connecting for long periods with another, especially attempting to convey the multitude of data and emotions and processes – and he longs for his bed, for the indent where his body lay that had been just the correct temperature to doze off when he had been there last, to adjust his pillow and fall back asleep so he can re-cooperate before having to deal with an awake Milverton tomorrow.

Sherlock doesn't speak for an elongated stretch of time, and for a moment, John is concerned he messed up, that he showed the man too much too soon, overwhelmed him, frightened him off. But then Sherlock is not a man who can be easily intimidated and after a moment the detective looks up, eyes bright, clear like a cloudless night sky, vast and burning with an eager starlight, and he says;

"That was... er... that was good"

John laughs at the hesitant nature of the man's words, before Sherlock straightens, his posture all ramrod lines and flat plane angles.

"My turn?" he asks.

_You don't have to, _John would start to say, his mouth starting to form the words, but Sherlock cuts him off with a raise of his hand, a quick glance, _I want to _written there in legible copperplate script, crisp as parchment.

So mustering up the gleaming wavering reserves of magic, sensing them ripple through veins and arteries – and London magic lends a hand to prop him up, weaving a grey pulsing thread that shimmers with trapped colours like spilt oil into the golden sanguine emanation of John's – the doctor reaches out once more, resting their forehead's together, clenching Sherlock's hand tighter in his own, and uncertainly, starts to read Sherlock.

The pace is protracted, intentionally passive, allowing John to test where he can and cannot go. A man's mind is a fortress of self, and he's never felt comfortable imposing on someone else's privacy.

_Imagine a door blocking what you don't want me to see, _he informs Sherlock with distracted concern – wanting to do this right – but he senses a smirk and a well-known roll of the detective's eyes, as though the idea of blocking John's path anywhere, denying him anything is illogical. As such John encounters no doorways, although he knows that Sherlock would be able to subconsciously conjure them should he desire.

John spends less time studying the errant winding passageways of Sherlock's head than he is tempted to, but he's all too aware that it drains Sherlock's energy too, not helped by the first inklings of the detective coming down from the adrenaline rush of nearly being killed. Aware of time constraints, he checks only through the things that matter to Sherlock, a cursory passing to all but what is at the forefront of his thoughts and therefore the most accessible.

Surprisingly, thoughts concerning John are there, evanescent shifting incomplete shapes and emotions that merge and form and collapse, brilliantly obvious – even though it's difficult, as he suspected, to navigate his way around the synapses and corridors of Sherlock's mind, because the twisting roads take him to rooms that seem utterly random, and John gets a glimpse, however fleeting, of how the genius of Sherlock works, his great leaping deductions, his connection to every sense to aid him in his discoveries.

Awkwardly, like he's walked into a room to see something he shouldn't, the doctor wants to stumble back the way he came, out and away from this place, because he knows how private the detective is, how uncomfortable the man would feel should John be privy to his innermost considerations of the heart.

But the man whose thoughts he is reading internally gives a long-suffering sigh, and his presence is there to guide John, and if he had a corporeal form in the indescribable intricate map of the detective's mind, John can tell Sherlock would have grasped his hand, be pulling him alone, like this is another case and they are chasing the shadow lines on the city street again.

_Watch, _he smirks at John. And although he is not proficient in any natural talent for the craft, he's picked up the basics, has studied from a master and estimates the rest with all the skill of a quick learner. _Only Sherlock, _John thinks with a smile, but he keeps that one to himself, as really, he shouldn't have been surprised.

And so Sherlock takes control of the images this time, rushing straight into things tinted with star bursts of emotion with no warning. The world's only consulting detective shows John the shock, wonder when he saw John as he truly was – and John has never seen himself from another perspective and it makes for a curious study –, and the whole image of John, eyes shimmering gold, strength like pillars that have stood the sands of ages in his tone, is highlighted not by fear, never fear, because Sherlock could never be frightened of what he knows will never hurt him, but stranger emotions than John could ever have imagined. Awe. Surprise. A vision of John that is not some eldritch ghoul, unnatural, fearful and glorious and so even more frightening for it.

Instead, Sherlock shows him how beautiful John's magic makes him look, the soft downy hair of his scalp fading into a lighter elegant shade, his whole body glowing somehow with a light buried just beneath the skin, pulsing with magic and energy. Sherlock lingers on this, the positive things, the heraldic noble qualities that Sherlock has always seen in John and has always valued for what they are.

Then deeper, he goes, leading the pursuit, down warrens and pathways, further and further, and John is trusted implicitly with more intimate things, the things Sherlock in all his detachment keeps to his chest; the isolation he has trained himself to mostly ignore, the fragility of genius that needs an audience and so rarely gained one before John arrived, the misunderstandings and the mistrust that come with the job and the man and the leaping deductions he makes, like mechanical magic tricks in circuses and fairground shows, but _so _much better than that.

And because this is the chance he has at his fingertips, Sherlock takes the time to show John all the things that bring him happiness, allow the doctor to share in them; a trilling violin air, swooping, entrancing – Allegro, Tremolo, Adagio, the mournful codetta – his appreciation for the city, _their_ London – _Sherlock's landscape of high-rise buildings, backstreet's and alleys and black taxi's crawling through traffic, John's underground arcana of covens and gathering places that seep with the smell of musty parchment and candle wax, with the soft dust of chalk - _how when fog swirls in from the river, it eddies over the black concrete like a caress.

And he shows him how he can appreciate the beauty of stars – the ancient light formed from the fusion of hydrogen, sources of energy long extinguished and forgotten – because they make him feel like he's not the only one who is alone in the city and then, how that changed when he met John and felt _companionship/attraction/love _finally, finally after so long – and stars became a symbol of light in an unremitting darkness, unwavering and fearless, and Sherlock was no longer alone.

Sherlock shows John Watson a faint indication of what that blistering virulent love feels like, the quenching of the hunger of a man who has been starving without realising, and it is brutal and overpowering and unquestioning. _I love you, _it would say, but the words, the sentiment are simply semantics chosen to present an ideal, and John just focuses on drowning in the innate sweeping nature of what is mirrored in his own heart.

John resurfaces to reality light-headed and dead on his feet, bones aching, heavy and tired, but there is a warm smile on his face. Fond, unlined with any self-doubt. Sherlock too is giving his own version of the sentiment, a relaxing of all his hard angles, allowing the shutters of rationality to drop for a moment, although it threatens to slide back into a frown when he takes in the pallor of the doctor's skin. John smirks, and touches a hand to the detective's cheek. _I'm ok, Sherlock, _he translates the thought through contact and the sensation of a caress alone. And he means it, has never meant it more, feels contented and free, and more, more than ok.

John Watson finally feels whole.


End file.
